Niccolo said to him, 'As son of such a father, and so fair to
look upon, it is a shame that thou knowest nothing of the Latin
language, which would be so great an ornament to thee. If thou learnest
it not, thou wilt be good for nothing, and as soon as the flower of
youth is over, wilt be a man of no consequence' (virtu). When Piero
heard this, he straightway perceived that it was true, and said that he
would gladly take pains to learn, if only he had a teacher. Whereupon
Niccol• answered that he would see to that. And he found him a learned
man for Latin and Greek, named Pontano, whom Piero treated as one of
his own house, and to whom he paid 100 gold florins a year. Quitting
all the pleasures in which he had hitherto lived, he studied day and
night, and became a friend of all learned men and a nobleminded
statesman. He learned by heart the whole 'neid and many speeches of
Livy, chiefly on the way between Florence and his country house at
Trebbio. Antiquity was represented in another and higher sense by
Giannozzo Manetti (13931459). Precocious from his first years, he was
hardly more than a child when he had finished his apprenticeship in
commerce and became bookkeeper in a bank. But soon the life he led
seemed to him empty and perishable, and he began to yearn after
science, through which alone man can secure immortality.
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